Statement

Time, Layers, Media, Fusion (Statement)

My work explores the impact of media on
the individual and by that question the
term individual itself.

My favourite tools are words.
When I work with words, I become aware
of my own perceptions and my expectations
towards my environment, my reality.
It’s the best way for me to translate my inner
landscapes and perceptions of reality to
the outside, or rather, to recreate them in
another person’s mind.

I occupy words to have them occupy another
person’s head, fusing two sets of minds,
questioning thoughts and selves.
Listening to the spoken word, or reading a
text is in my experience the fastest way to
evoke an individuals imagination and thus
generate subjective imagery. Words allow
me to enter a person’s mind without forcing
my own images onto him_her, yet altering
their thoughts in the same moment.
My work seeks to re-appropriate the very
same divisive strategies that I question in
media as a means of my own suggestive
agenda.

Most recently I created text-collages, that
merge quotes from movies, novels, theoretical
texts or music into one piece. These
quotes are designed to open up new suggestive
meaning to the listener recognising
them. Whilst on a simultaneous level these
quotes also seek to reference an omnipresence
of media messages in our environment.
I use performative strategies which allow to
directly interact with an audience. I like the
idea of confronting and being confronted
at the same time, so that I cannot withdraw
myself from consequences and reactions,
but have to face them, as my audience is
facing me.

This moment of confrontation resembles
the interaction of the individual with society,
of which he_she is a part of. But it
allows the performer as well as the audience
to question and explore new perspectives
on applied strategies.

I like to explore these terms in reference to
the physical and/or virtual reality in which
they reside, with time and space playing
equally essential roles in my research.
This moment is almost over.
Artists and theorists who have influenced
me are for instance Eva Illouz, Janet Cardiff,
Sophie Calle, Raphael Lozano-Hemmer,
Michel Gondry, Techieng Hsieh, Sanja
Ivekovic, Dan Graham, Tino Seghal, Philip
Auslander, Terry Gilliam, Jean Beaudrillard,
Carola Dertnig and Harun Farocki.

I perceive myself as a media influenced and infiltrated being.

I am part of a reality.
I am part of a system.

This system demands a lot of me.
I am systematically required to submit to the latest economical and political strategies.
I am dependent.
I am a target group.
I am important.
I am replaceable.
I am supposed to be happy.
I am never special, successful, wealthy or beautiful enough.
I am an individual.
I am not the only one.
I am irritated.
I do not know how not to be part of this system.
I do not know how not to support it.
I am not the only one, despairing.
Hah.